With the holiday season approaching and everyone getting ready to spend time with family, we thought it would be a good time to talk about maintaining a good work/life balance when it comes to studio ownership. We realize that having a salon suite means that you are in the personal relationship business but that does not mean that clients should be texting your personal phone at 9:00pm the night before their appointment. We will discuss a basic way to try to take back control of your communication with clients and keeping healthy work/life balance below.
This process starts with having a business phone number. This helps give you a boundary between your work and home life. The importance of having a separate business phone number is that people will realize that you are not available 24/7 to answer their calls and texts. This will allow you to make the move toward more standard business hours and a regular schedule that helps set boundaries for clients.
Now, you don’t need to rush out and buy a second phone for just business, you can get a second number easily with a Google Voice number (all you need is a Google account). With Google voice you can select a local phone number, utilize your current phone to make calls, and have an app on your phone to access things. There are other phone services that provide more features but Google Voice is a good free option for starting out.
Starting up a business phone line allows you to set up business hours for your clients so that they will know when they can expect for you to respond. When you start down this road, it can be a little scary at first to not respond right away to clients who text after hours but it gets easier over time and clients adjust their expectations. For clients that can’t adjust to you not responding at 9:00 pm on a Tuesday then may be they aren’t the right client for you but that could be a whole other post.
Utilizing a business phone, leads to standard business hours, which helps create a baseline of expectations when it comes to the client and salon suite owner relationship. This helps you gain or regain control of your business when it comes to communication standards. This is the first step to helping to contribute to a better work/life balance and hopefully enjoying the time with your family during this holiday season.
-The Cirque Team